Double Sided Punishment
by M-Maltesers
Summary: AMATSUKI. "I didn’t think you were serious about the cleaning," Kon said, glancing down. Tokidoki cleans, Kon watches and both of them feel uncomfortable with the situation somehow. Kon Shinonome and Rikugou Tokidoki.


Notes: **Amatsuki **is one of my most beloved manga. :D It's by Takayama Shinobu and if you haven't read it, you should really try it; the art's beautiful and the story is complicated but worth the time it takes to understand it. You can find scanlations at http : / / amatsuki-manga dot livejournal dot com. (Remove spaces and replace 'dot' with '.' obviously.)

This is set at the end of chapter four of the first volume, though the prompt is from chapter three, when Toki mentions not wanting to be a burden and says he can do housework for Shamon. Comments/feedback are loved. :D :D

**Double-Sided Punishment**

**By Miki**

"I didn't think you were serious about the cleaning," Kon said, glancing down.

Toki looked up quickly. He hadn't noticed Kon returning, so he grinned, looking up at him and pulling a slight face. "I wasn't, but I guess Shamon-sama really wanted some spring cleaning done."

"Or maybe it's punishment," he reflected after a pause, smiling wryly. If it were punishment, it didn't seem fair that he got it and not Kon. "Kuchiha has to clean the inside and I'm doing the outside," he explained and gestured over his shoulder to the inside of the house.

Kon nodded, glancing along the outside of the building, eyes observing the familiar lines of the wooden planks of the deck they were standing on. The architecture of the building was pretty simple and it wasn't that large, despite its appearance from the outside.

Toki probably had the easier job anyway. _He_ didn't have to clean the tatami and try to kick Shamon out of the way to do it.

Still, Toki was going about everything the wrong way, Kon thought. He grimaced and watched as Toki tried to clean in small circles at a time, rubbing the cloth against the grain of the wood rather than along it. A bucket of water sat at his side, leaking a puddle of water onto the wood. Kon didn't think Toki would have noticed it doing that.

Toki hadn't even tied up his clothes at all either and his sleeves were falling close to the surface he was working on. He was kneeling on the fabric of his kimono, which probably meant less grazing on his knees, but it wasn't great for the material, and Kon knew from experience that Kuchiuha would want to take Toki's head off if he returned inside looking dirtier than the ground he was supposed to be cleaning. She'd take _Kon's_ head off if he noticed and didn't tell Toki how to do it properly.

Kon opened his mouth to tell Toki so, but he realised Toki probably didn't even know he was doing it himself.

"Hey…" he sighed.

Toki looked up at him, blinking.

They were right down one side of the building and judging from the wet patches Kon could see, Toki hadn't progressed very far at all in his cleaning.

He debated actually getting down on his hands and knees and picking up the extra cloth to help, but he wasn't in the mood for that right now. He wanted to get home and he'd only really stopped by at Shamon's place again because…

Why had he stopped by? He wondered. He'd already been here today and he had books to read at home and things to do.

Since Toki's arrival, he'd been neglecting looking after his own place, so it was starting to get a bit messy. It could probably use a bit of cleaning too, before the spiders and rats started moving in with the dust mites.

He'd probably come back to see Toki some more, he mused, even if it hadn't registered in his head before that that's what he was doing.

"Shinonome," Toki said, loudly.

Kon stared at him, blinking a little. "What?" he asked.

"You were staring," Toki said, turning his attention back to the floor. "Why don't you help?"

Kon considered for a moment. Then he shrugged, pulling out a cord and stepping closer. "Stand up," he instructed, waving with his hand.

Toki looked confused but did as he was told, holding out his wet cloth in case that was what Kon wanted.

"Here," Kon said, shaking his head slightly at Toki's slowness. "Hold out your arms."

Toki lifted up his arms, holding them out to his sides, about to ask what Kon was doing when he found an bit of cord shoved in his mouth. "Bite," Kon instructed.

Toki found he had no other option so he held the end of the cord, feeling Kon tying the cord around his arms and back, holding up his sleeves out of the way.

Kon took the end of the cord from Toki's mouth when he was finished and tied a knot carefully. His work was neither too tight nor loose and Toki waved his arms for a moment, impressed. He could have done it himself, he wanted to say, but Kon had more practice at this stuff anyway so he probably did it better than Toki could have.

Toki admired Kon for a moment, opening his mouth to thank him. "Hey, tha-"

He jerked, his whole body jumping as he felt hands on his legs, much, _much_ higher up his thighs than they should have been. "O-Oi! Shinono-"

"Hold still," Kon replied quickly, reaching a hand around Toki to hold him steady when he nearly slipped backwards. He'd forgotten he was standing on a wet patch of wood.

Kon finished hitching up the bottom of Toki's kimono quickly. His hands were deft and nimble; quick to do in a minute what would have taken Toki a good five to do. His full-length outfit was now feeling a whole lot smaller than it had been a few minutes before, and his legs felt really exposed and almost cold in the crisp air.

Toki could feel his whole face turning red, and his ears too. Even if it was Kon touching him, it was still… Well, it was _Kon_. It was weird enough to have someone else touch him, even if the other person was a boy too.

"Okay, finished," Kon grinned, and slapped Toki on the back, knocking him out of his daze.

"E… Eh?" Toki managed to get out, totally surprised.

"That's all the help you're getting from me," Kon grinned, as though tying up Toki's clothes was somehow helping to get all the dirt off the floor. "But I'll sit here and supervise."

Toki blinked, watching as Kon sat back and got comfortable on a dry patch of the wooden flooring. "What?" He complained loudly, huffing a little. He'd felt really nervous there for a moment; so nervous he had almost forgotten to breathe in. Seeing Kon sitting so calmly by the wall made him feel funny, so he glared at him quickly and when Kon met his gaze, looked away just as quickly again, staring with wide eyes in the opposite direction.

"It was your work too… playing that prank…" he grumbled, though he didn't really care about that anymore. His face still felt hot but he managed to resist the temptation to glance back at Kon, even as he could swear his skin felt tingly and prickly where Kon had touched him.

He must have been imagining things, he thought, and hoped that was the answer.

Kon ignored Toki's statement anyway, leaning back against the wall of the building, stretching out his legs, crossing his arms and watching Toki as he scrubbed feverishly at the floor.

Perhaps he'd tucked Toki's clothes up a little too high, he realised. He could see an awful lot of Toki's legs from where he was sitting, and Toki's skin was pretty damn white. He glanced at his own legs, but they seemed a bit more tanned, so he glanced back at Toki again, this time noticing how awkward he looked as he shuffled around on his hands and knees, sometimes squatting with his hands between his legs, sometimes with his knees on the floor and his arms out in front of him.

He looked a bit like a frog.

Kon hadn't intended to waste away the rest of his day, but his other chores could wait a while, and it was comfortable enough here in the sunshine and the peace and quiet.

Despite having his clothes tied up and out of the way, and having been given directions, Toki was still almost unbearably slow in cleaning the boards.

Kon didn't know whether it was because he was trying to be thorough or because he'd just never cleaned anything before in his life, but he really couldn't bring himself to care either way, since there was something about watching Toki that just amused him to no end.

When Kuchiha came out an hour later, having already finished the inside, she glanced first at Kon, then at Toki, then back at Kon, who blinked at her.

Kuchiha gave him a kick to the head and a lecture about getting in the way and not helping with the cleaning, and Kon decided that perhaps it was time to take his leave after all.

.fin.


End file.
